


unnecessary and insufficient conditions: a study in compactification

by lotts (LottieAnna)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Crossing Timelines, M/M, Magical Realism, Pining, Soulmates, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14183751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LottieAnna/pseuds/lotts
Summary: “I moved back home,” Mat says. “I think I’m trying to find myself.”“Any luck?”“Not really.”(Or: a story about a Mat-shaped hole in a Tito-shaped universe)





	unnecessary and insufficient conditions: a study in compactification

**Author's Note:**

> IF YOU FOUND THIS THROUGH GOOGLING, KNOW ANYONE MENTIONED IN THIS STORY PERSONALLY, OR ARE MENTIONED YOURSELF: please, please click away. This is a work of fiction and nothing written in this story is true. Any accurate information used in this story is publicly available information about public figures, the rest is made up, 100%.

_i._

He looks familiar.

“I get that sometimes,” the guy says. “Roger Federer.”

Tito blinks. “What?”

“That’s who you’re thinking of,” the guy says. “Roger Federer. But I’m not an athlete, unfortunately, just a guy who wants to buy you a drink.”

“Smooth,” Tito says absently. This guy should probably not be hitting on him.

“Is it working?”

“I mean, you can buy me a drink,” Tito says. “But—I don’t think you look like Roger Federer.”

“Oh,” the guy says, and then he shrugs. “Then maybe we met once, I don’t know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mat,” he says. “With one t.”

“Mat with one t,” Tito echoes. “I swear I know you from somewhere. Did you ever play hockey?”

“What?” he says, a little more taken aback than Tito thinks the question warrants.

“Hockey,” Tito says. “I play. Like, pro.”

“I didn’t know, I don’t—I’ve never really followed hockey,” Mat says, and he’s looking at Tito like he just saw a ghost. “I should go.”

“Oh—”

“Sorry,” Mat says. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” Tito says, and the guy is gone in the blink of an eye.

* * *

_ii._

It’s August, and he runs past Tito, the Hudson river trailing behind him, and Tito stops in his tracks.

He doesn’t trust himself to know he’s right, because he doesn’t get a good enough look at his face, but he thinks he is, isn’t sure how he knows.

His hair is longer now.

* * *

_iii._

“There’s apparently some guy who plays beer league out on the island,” Nick is saying. “He grew in in Canada—BC, I think?—but he works here now, and get this—he swears he never played growing up. He’s never even watched a game. But he’s something else, I’m telling you. I saw a video of him, and like, if you told me he was a figure skater, I’d have believed you, but apparently he hasn’t even stepped on ice since he was little.”  

“So he’s good?” Cal asks, and Nick snorts.

“That’s an understatement,” he says. “I’m serious, someone in Bridgeport should offer this kid a contract, then we give him a two-way deal after we turn him pro.”

“How old is he?” John asks.

“Young,” Nick says. “Like, Beau’s age.”

“So we could—” John starts, but Tito cuts him off.

“We can’t sign people, guys,” Tito say. “That’s management’s job.”

“No, but we could get the guy some press,” Cal says.

“Do we know that he wants press?” Tito says. “Some guys are happy with beer league.”

“This guy is too good for beer league,” Nick says.

“And you’re basing this on, what, one video?”

Nick shakes his head. “If you saw it, you’d get it. I’m telling you, this kid’s got some magic.”

The way he says it— _magic—_ sends a shiver down Tito’s spine.

* * *

_iv._

_I feel like I miss it,_ the message says. _And it’s always been that way. I was afraid to watch it. It was a running joke, I had to have my back to the TV if it was on. It was painful, and I couldn’t figure out why, but then I watched an Islanders game, and went out the next day and found a rink. I would’ve gone right after, but everything was closed. I had to find some ice. But now I’m playing a lot, and people are starting to notice, and it’s turning into this big what if, and I don’t like it. That’s what I was afraid of, I think._

Tito isn’t even sure if he wants to answer, but he sends back, _It’s a little bit like falling in love._

 _It’s a lot like falling in love,_ he gets back, and then, _I didn’t mean to send that._

 _I’m sorry,_ Tito sends. _It’s okay, though._

_It feels like I was supposed to be playing all along._

Tito heads over to the guy’s profile; there are no photos of his face, and no new tweets in over a year, and Tito can’t even find his first name anywhere, but he has to ask.

_Did we meet once?_

He doesn’t respond, and he doesn’t respond, and Tito leaves for a few minutes and comes back, and he still hasn’t responded.

_Mat? With one t?_

And he doesn’t respond, and he doesn’t respond, and Tito closes Twitter.

* * *

_v._

The guy’s account gets deleted, and news of the short-lived beer league mystery superstar dries up.

There are rumors, Tito finds out through exhaustive research. Some people think he might’ve signed with a team in Europe, others say he struck up an ECHL deal with a team out west, and then there are a few truly implausible theories, involving witness protection and other conspiracy theory-type stuff.

It’s weird, because it’s not like anyone outside the Long Island hockey community even knew who this Barzal guy was. Tito thinks he should’ve had friends, or something. Thinks his former teammates shouldn’t be joking about where he could’ve gone without worrying at least a little, though apparently he’d said goodbye and everything.

 _My son plays varsity,_ one woman writes, _he says I’ve gotten so much better. I guess playing on his line helped—he’s so fast!! He babysat my youngest a few times, really good with the kids. Hope he’s as good for whatever hockey community has him now as he was for us! We’ll miss you Barzer!_

Tito has no reason to believe it’s true, but it makes him smile anyway.

* * *

_vi._

Tito has been staring at his face for the last thirty minutes, at a random restaurant in Vancouver.  He’s at a table with an older couple—parents, Tito assumes—and he’s avoiding Tito’s gaze so purposely that Tito knows he’s seen him.

So, when he goes to the bathroom, Tito follows, and when he opens the door to the men’s room, Mat’s standing at the sink, washing his hands, and he looks up as Tito walks in, meeting his eye in the mirror.

“Hi,” he says, turning off the water, but he doesn’t turn around.

“Hi,” Tito says.

“You—” he gulps. “You keep looking at me like you know me.”

“We met once,” Tito says.

“Sorry I ghosted on you,” Mat says. “If it counts as ghosting, after one conversation.”

“S’okay,” Tito says. “Where did you go?”

“I moved back home,” Mat says. “I think I’m trying to find myself.”

“Any luck?”

“Not really.”

“Sucks,” Tito says. “You still play?”

Mat doesn’t answer.

“You love it,” Tito says. “Why would you stop?”

“Because it feels like cheating,” Mat says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Mat says. “My sister thinks I run away from any source of happiness.”

“She sounds smart.”

“She’s 16, she can afford to be romantic.”

“So you think hockey’s your big romance?”

Mat finally turns around. “I used to want a family,” he says, “and a future to look towards, with a husband and a house I owned and a high paying job, and I wanted to travel and learn about history.”

“And now?” Tito asks.

Mat shakes his head. “I just want to play.”

* * *

  _vii._

The ice is too smooth for a lake, and the night is too bright for the hour.

“This is nothing like hockey,” Mat says, skating backwards in a circle around Tito.

“I know,” Tito says. “Just the head-clearing parts of it.”

“I’m so bad at clearing my head,” Mat says. “I like thinking too much.”

“What about going on instinct?”

“Oh, I’m a big instinct guy too.”

“I want to see what you see,” Tito says.

“I want to play on your line,” Mat says. “You’re fast, you’d be fun to have on my wing.”

“I want to skate down a hill,” Tito says.

“I can’t believe this,” Mat says.

“Can’t believe what?”

“This.” He spins on his skates. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been, I think.”

“Falling in love will do that to you,” Tito says, and then he skates up to Mat, stops right in front of him. “You’re really special on the ice.”

“Not off it,” Mat says.

Tito shakes his head. “Off it too, I think.”

“I don’t know if I’m destined for anything great,” Mat says. “I think I could’ve been, once upon a time.”

Tito smiles, and pushes a strand of hair off of Mat’s face. “You think too much about the future.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think about? The past?”

“Or the present,” Tito says. “You’re already doing something great, is what I’m saying.”

“You don’t know me that well.”

Tito shrugs. “It kind of feels like I do.”

“Oh,” Mat says. “Why?”

“I don’t really know,” Tito says, honest.

“Do you ever believe in stupid things?” Mat asks.

“All the time,” Tito says.

Mat looks at Tito, like he’s seeing every part of him at once, and then, before either of them can think, he leans in.

* * *

_viii._

His skin is warm to touch, even though they’ve just come in from the cold.

Their bodies are as close as they can be.

Tito wishes they were closer.

* * *

_ix._

“That was supposed to happen,” Mat says. “In another world, where I get everything I want.”

“And in this one?” Tito asks, his heart pounding.

Mat shakes his head. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

“Oh,” Tito says.

“I think,” Mat says, “In that other world, I fell in love with hockey, and I fell in love with you, too.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That I’m a romantic, I guess,” Mat says. “I hope this was real.”

It doesn’t feel real.

“Did I love you back?” Tito asks.

“I don’t know,” Mat says. “I don’t think I ever found out.”

Tito thinks he has an answer, but he doesn’t know how to tell Mat what it is, how to put words to it at all.

* * *

_x._

His name and number, printed in blue and orange above a locker, and Tito can’t stop staring.

It feels like the tide is coming in for the first time.

* * *

_xi._

He loves so much more than hockey. He always has, but he’s still learning to make room in his heart for the rest of it.

 _How does he not know he’s infinite,_ Tito marvels, as Mat passes the puck with Ebs.

Mat smiles more here, works harder, looks more sure on his feet. This is the right place, and somehow, Mat had shrugged this off—

for some reason, he chose to leave—

without meaning to, and he brought Tito with him.

* * *

_xii._

“If I could,” Mat says, almost casual, “I’d freeze an entire trail so you could skate down the side of a mountain.”

* * *

_xiii._

And then one day it hits Tito, that Mat tried to choose him instead.

 _So that’s the stupid thing he believed in,_ he thinks, and then he starts to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Mat asks.

“Nothing,” Tito says. “I just realized something funny.”

“What about?”

“Your face.”

“What about my face?”

“It’s just,” Tito says, “You look like Roger Federer.”

“You’re so weird,” Mat says. “I feel like I should take that as a compliment.”

“You definitely should,” Tito says.

Mat rolls his eyes, and his cheeks turn red, and Tito grins even wider, because it's easier than trying to wrap his head around the fact that he's become the center of this person's world.


End file.
